I remember as a highschool student taking a book out of my highschool library. It was a set of short stories. This was in the early 80’s. The book if I remember correctly was an older book, hardbound. I have been trying to remember the name of the short story or the book for the longest time.
Plot synopsis of the story:
A man is put into a prison cell. This is not your ordinary prison though. It is a room that is on a large ferris wheel like structure inside of a mountain. The inmates have to pull on chains to make the structure spin. The inmates are put in at different points based on their sentence. It goes into great detail on how the whole thing works. The gist of the story is the man surviving his sentence inside this strange prison. I know this is very vague, anyone out there read this same story?
If it’s the one I recall, at the end of the ride some of the machinery was designed to carve elaborate scrollwork into the back of the prisoners. Then they would be dumped by a mechanical pitchfork into a pile.
The story could have been named something simple, like “The Prisoner”.
We were given an analysis that it was an alegory of Jesus, updated to reflect WWII cruelty.
Not a short story, but the description is unmistakeable. Perhaps he used it in a different context in a short story or snitched the idea - The Great Wheel of Kharnabhar from Brian W. Aldiss’ Helliconia trilogy, in particular the “Inside the Wheel” chapter towards the end of the third volume, “Helliconia Winter”.
Helliconia is a terrific piece of work, BTW. You don’t hear people mention it much.
Well, I don’t know what the story mchapman described is, but it isn’t “In the Penal Colony”. “In the Penal Colony” is about a man who visits a penal colony where a machine carves the crime in the prisoner’s back, and in the 6 hours it takes them to die they have an epiphany. The main part of that story is the visitor questioning the use of this capital punishment.
I also thought of Brian Aldiss’s Helliconia books. However, I’m not totally sure, depending on the OPosters memory. For one thing, they push, they don’t pull. Also, it is very clear that you are not put in according to your sentence – at any one time there are two open slots, one with a man getting out, one with a man getting in. One revolution was 10 years. And it is not the “gist” of the story, just one of the more memorable parts.
Aldiss’ prisoners pull on chains, as the OP described - I’ve got the book right in front of me. The point about prisoners being inserted at different points according to the length of their sentences doesn’t match up, I will admit. However, there is so much overlap here that I would have to guess there is some connection, like Aldiss incorporating the idea from an earlier short story, or reworking that bit into a self contained story. Another point is that Aldiss describes the wheel and its functioning in excruciating detail, just as the OP suggests.
At the time of the story in Helliconia, the wheel is used for religious penance, which is the reason it was built. But:
I tried to look up Aldiss short stories, but the bibliographies I found of his work list short story collections, not individual stories.
I would be fascinated to learn that some other author came up with the idea independently.
Thanks kylemonger. This thread is 14 years old but I don’t think it was ever answered until now assuming you are correct. I have had questions answered after many years and answered a couple like that myself and it was always good to put the mystery to rest. The OP is still around or was at least in the past year. I will send a PM to make sure your response gets noted.
Wow. I’ve been a member for a long time (as long as this thread), but I am still astounded at what can be discovered / uncovered / explained by Dopers.
Thanks All! I will find a copy of the story to read. I read on Straightdope alot but I guess I hadn’t logged into my account for a long while. Shagnasty thanks for the message to look at the thread again! Of course I logged on to ask another vague question.
As long as we’re chasing zombies… There’s a bit in one of Burroughs’ Barsoom (John Carter of Mars) novels where Dejah Thoris is put into a slowly revolving prison. I believe it’s an end-of-novel cliffhanger. A year later, the doors align again and she can come out.
A short YA story where a kid does a science project to confirm the curvature of the Earth. He takes careful measurements of a distant mountain, and does the calculations, only to “discover” that the Earth is flat. Eventually, he works out that this was due to atmospheric refraction, and redoes the experiment, confirming that the Earth is, in fact, round.
